Erotik im Fernen Osten Oder - Hardcover

Kiefer, Anselm

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807615749 ISBN 13: 9780807615744

Publisher: George Braziller Inc., 2006

Synopsis

Anselm Kiefer is best known for his brooding forests and somber fields encrusted with debris, and for his haunted monuments reeking of the Nazi past. This series of delicately executed watercolorslandscapes and a surprising sequence of erotic nudesreveals a wholly different side to the artist.

In 1974 Kiefer traveled to the coast of Norway. Three years later, using photographs he had taken during his trip as an aide-memoire, he painted Erotik im Fernen Osten oder: Transition from cool to warm, a work that incorporates his deepest aesthetic and philosophical concerns. In these lyrically expressive seascapes and landscapes, the icebergs and frigid skies of Norwegian winters are rendered in deep blue, violet, and purple tones. As the sequence gives way to lush female nudes, the palette grows brighter, and there is a virtual explosion of color and form that evokes seasonal changes. The spontaneity and simplicity of these images are expressions of Kiefer's warning against intellectual, as opposed to visceral, understanding.

With splendid reproductions of each of the series' sixty-five watercolors, as well as images from two other books by the artist, this publication demonstrates Kiefer's brilliant use of the book form as a means of artistic expression. 95 color illustrations.

About this title

About the Author

Anselm Keifer, a native of Donaueschingen, Germany, is one of the most celebrated artists working today. He studied art informally under Joseph Beuys at the Düsseldorf Academy in the early 1970s. Kiefer lives and works in Barjac, France.

Review

Erotik im Fernen Osten oder by Anselm Kiefer George Braziller * Now available The art of Anselm Kiefer is a mud-spattered miscellany of dun, brown, and rust, thatched and encrusted with everything from ash and straw to glass and shellac -- pretty, it ain't. So this new collection of previously unseen watercolors will surprise most, and disappoint those looking for more of Kiefer's somber excavations of Nazi atrocity and German civilian culpability. These vibrant watercolors, created from snapshots taken during a 1974 trip to the coast of Norway, are dripping with lighthearted violets and blues, and are as expansive and kinetic as his well-known works are claustrophobic and grim: Porphyrious icebergs bleed into coal-black ships foregrounded against deep blue Norwegian skies and white luminescent cliffs. Though they took three years to create, there's such a vital immediacy to these paintings it feels like they were done on the deck of the ship -- all the fierce, bright clarity of a northern winter is captured on the page. The brash force of the seascapes is contrasted with the warmth of the erotic nudes that make up the second half of the book, a series of studies done in oranges and reds that belies the idea Kiefer ever despaired of the human condition. -Jonny Diamond -- The L Magazine

Edition details

• Publisher: George Braziller Inc.
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807615749
• ISBN 13: 9780807615744
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 85